Ethanol discussed at World Pork Expo// 10 Jun 2008

It states in this article that Conservation Reserve Program acreage is being opened up to haying and grazing, this may be good for the farmers, but what is it's opportunity cost to the environment? If this land was originally set aside as reserve land it has probably been left idle and therefore will need to be modified to provide the best benefit to the animals it will be supporting. Modifications would probably include spraying undesirable plants, such as multi-flora rose, with round-up, then it will probably be necessary to reseed the entire area, because fescue is not very nutritious. Therefore the farmers will need to do a lot of prep work to the land before it will be viable for the grazing and especially the haying. The article doesn't state what kind of shape this land is in, but let's suppose that it is does require these kinds of modifications, what will this cost the farmer? Will the marginal benefit outweigh the marginal cost? I think probably yes, but I would wager that there will be some environmentalists who will try to stop this from moving forward. Something needs to be done to help the farmer out, lately it seems everything is against him, from soaring fuel prices to sky-rocketing feed bills. What are some other things that could be done to help the farmer out? Everyone needs to realize that without the farmer we, as a people, don't eat. It's as simple as that.